Good morning, here's a fun read to refresh your mems on the myth of Narcissus.

Acceleration of technology inspires more amputations of our existing functions in order to find better ones, which lead to more new appendages, which then accelerate technology further... more proof of the underlying mechanisms of Kurzweil's Law of Accelerating Returns.

Excerpted from Laws of New Media

The Extended Phenotype
In genetics, an organism's phenotype is the outer manifestation of the tendencies inherent in the genetic material

The extended phenotype is the reach of genetic tendencies beyond the organism into the external world "e.g., a bird's nest, a spider's web, or the caddisfly larva's stone house"

Media As Man's Extended Phenotype
Media act as humanity's extended phenotype by extending our sense, motor, and mental capacities
Reify: from the Latin res, thing: to treat an abstract concept as a concrete object or entity.
Evanescence: from the Latin evanescere: the tendency to vanish like vapor.
+ Thought and experience are evanescent
+ Media allow us to reify (and thereby capture) them for later consumption

Examples Of Extension
+ Writing extended speech over space and time
+ Arithmetic extends our capacity for measuring and balancing
+ Libraries extend our capacities for memory and recollection

Continue reading...

Slate tackles the beatification of Mother Teresa by describing her as a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud.

Referenced within that article is Orwell's essay on Ghandi which is attempting to add some dirt to the ultra-rosy picture the public carries about him.

but at any rate the gentleness with which he was nearly always handled was due partly to the feeling that he was useful.

As a teacher your goal may be to inspire humility and wisdom, so it's nice to invoke readily accessible characters like Ghandi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

...

Both articles draw their criticism along the lines of how these people's dogma (Teresa's anti-feminism, Ghandi's ascetism) and possible narcissism should make imperfect the perfect sketch drawn up by history.

McClintock's House - A website built using primarily apache configuration directives that describes the contents of a house.

Schweitzer's Struggle to Find Life's Meaning

Google search "albert schweitzer"

Amazon.com: Excerpt from MY SECRET GARDEN: MY SECRET GARDEN

But I said nothing. My editor's insinuation, like my former lover's rejection, hit me where I was most sensitive: in that area where women, knowing least about each other's true sexual selves, are most vulnerable. What is it to be a woman? Was I being unfeminine? It is one thing not to have doubted the answer sufficiently to ever have asked the question of yourself at all. But it is another to know that question has suddenly been placed in someone else's mind, to be judged there in some indefinable, unknown, unimaginable competition or comparison. What indeed was it to be a woman? Unwilling to argue about it with this man's-man editor, who supposedly had his finger on the sexual pulse of the world (hadn't he, for instance, published James Jones and Mailer, and probably shared with them unpublishable sexual insights), I picked up myself, my novel, and my fantasies and went home where we were appreciated. But I shelved the book. The world wasn't ready yet for female sexual fantasy.

George Orwell: You and the Atom Bomb

It is a commonplace that the history of civilisation is largely the history of weapons. In particular, the connection between the discovery of gunpowder and the overthrow of feudalism by the bourgeoisie has been pointed out over and over again. And though I have no doubt exceptions can be brought forward, I think the following rule would be found generally true: that ages in which the dominant weapon is expensive or difficult to make will tend to be ages of despotism, whereas when the dominant weapon is cheap and simple, the common people have a chance. Thus, for example, thanks, battleships and bombing planes are inherently tyrannical weapons, while rifles, muskets, long-bows and hand-grenades are inherently democratic weapons. A complex weapon makes the strong stronger, while a simple weapon--so long as there is no answer to it--gives claws to the weak.

Found via Tim Swanson

Fallacies

In order to understand what a fallacy is, one must understand what an argument is. Very briefly, an argument consists of one or more premises and one conclusion. A premise is a statement (a sentence that is either true or false) that is offered in support of the claim being made, which is the conclusion (which is also a sentence that is either true or false).

Everytime I learn a new fallacy of thinking, I suddenly become overwhelmed with a sense of awe at the amount of ridiculousness upon which I've founded many of my ideas that I consider sacred I then quickly retrace my steps through a lot of my thinking, and revise and correct accordingly. Good times, and a good opportunity to learn some new Latin.

The Straight Dope Mailbag: How much is a gazillion?

Just so you know, here's the list of "named illions":

Billion has 9 zeros
Trillion has 12 zeros
Quadrillion has 15 zeros
Quintillion has 18 zeros
Sextillion has 21 zeros
Septillion has 24 zeros
Octillion has 27 zeros
Nonillion has 30 zeros
Decillion has 33 zeros
Undecillion has 36 zeros
Duodecillion has 39 zeros
Tredecillion has 42 zeros
Quattuordecillion has 45 zeros
Quindecillion has 48 zeros
Sexdecillion has 51 zeros
Septendecillion has 54 zeros
Octodecillion has 57 zeros
Novemdecillion has 60 zeros
Vigintillion has 63 zeros
Googol has 100 zeros.
Centillion has 303 zeros (except in Britain, where it has 600 zeros)
Googolplex has a googol of zeros

A Visual Databes of Extremist Symbos, Logos, and Tattoos

Doesn't the SS look like the SS in the band KISS